Madness: A Bipolar Life Read online

  I still haven't made the connection between my drinking and the maniacal swings of my mood. I don't see the chaos around me as moods. I see it as a chaotic life that I'm simply too weak to manage well. And, for that matter, I more than welcome the highs, and the fact that the alcohol makes them even higher. And the lows, the screaming fits that morph into deep despair and back up again, the terrifying flights of fantasy, the inability to control my impulses? That's all just me being my usual fuckup self. I think the alcohol is helping me manage my life.

  Still, I'm a little stressed. So when I finally decide to see a therapist, bipolar hardly crosses my mind. I want a therapist who can help me deal with all this stress and tell me how to manage it. Maybe I have low self-esteem. Maybe I'm not finished working through my issues with my parents. What I want is to become the kind of person who can pay her bills, do her laundry, clean her house, and go to school full-time, and teach, and do research, and publish, and write a spectacular novel, and have a perfect relationship, and be the life of the party, and, okay, maybe not drink quite so much, and, and, and. I want to be superwoman, and the fact that I'm not makes me hate myself and constantly wonder why I'm such a waste. The problem is that my life is chaotic. If there were no chaos in my life, there'd be no chaos in my head.

  So I look up a psychiatrist in the phone book, and off I go.

  Therapy

  1999

  Another waiting room, this one in a ritzy office in a wealthy part of San Francisco—tree-lined streets of little boutiques, bistros, salons, crowded with people in excellent shoes who have nowhere better to be in the middle of the day. This psychiatrist charges a mint and doesn't take insurance. Her office is a study in expensive furniture and fabric; soothing tans and creams prevail. The first visit, she puts me back on a hefty dose of Depakote, the med Lentz had me on in Minneapolis, and she also gives me a generous prescription for Klonopin, the tranquilizer he gave me to "take the edge off" the anxiety.

  "I'm telling you I'm losing my mind. I can't take this," I say, pacing in her sunny office, tapping my nails on the walls, playing with the plants.

  "What, precisely, can't you take?" She's very tall, extremely well dressed, and exceptionally poised. Her poise makes me a little insane.

  "I can't take these fucking mood swings! It never stops! I'm all over the fucking map!" I fling myself onto the couch, then fling myself up again and pace some more, gripping my head in my hands. "Aaaagh!" I yell under my breath, keeping my voice down, trying to hold still. She makes me incredibly nervous, sitting there smiling her mild smile. "And I can't take the anxiety. It feels like something is wrapping around my chest and squeezing. I can't breathe. My heart's racing. My thoughts are spinning. I can't keep up with them. It's all right when I'm writing, or when I'm at school. But the minute I'm alone again, the thoughts start up. I can't see for all the thoughts. I'm terrified all the time."

  "Are you taking your Klonopin?"

  "Yes! It doesn't help!"

  "Maybe you aren't taking enough of it."

  Klonopin's a benzodiazepine, and those can be very addictive. I used to love it, when it still worked. It was like mainlining a drink, the mellow calm instantaneous and complete. Now I have to take handfuls for it to even make a dent, and the last thing I want to do is run out. If she says I'm not taking enough, by all means, bring it on.

  "How much can I take?" I ask, perking up.

  "Take as much as you need," she says, waving her hand. "I'll write you a prescription for more."

  "But it doesn't seem to matter how much I take," I groan. "It wears off too fast. As soon as it wears off, the thoughts start up again and I get all panicky." I want something that will knock me flat and keep me there until the world goes away.

  "More should help. Just take it whenever you feel the anxiety coming on. And it's important that you don't forget to take it. If you miss a dose, you could go into withdrawal. It acts on the same neuroreceptors as alcohol," she says.

  "So I might as well just have a drink," I say, finding this a little odd.

  "It won't be as strong," she says. "Take the Klonopin."

  "Speaking of drinking." I sigh and fall back on the couch. "I went to an AA meeting the other night."

  "Why?"

  "My friends talked me into it. They keep telling me I'm an alcoholic." I click my nails against my teeth. "Obviously I'm not an alcoholic," I say, rolling my eyes. "But I'm drinking an awful lot." Not that I want to stop. I have, however, begun to notice the vast difference between the way I drink and the way everyone else drinks. And everyone else in my life drinks quite a lot.

  "I don't think you have a problem." She dismisses this with a sniff.

  "I got alcohol poisoning again the other night," I say. "I was still drunk when I showed up to give a lecture. And I still wasn't sober when I got to the AA meeting."

  "So you had a little too much to drink. It happens. How much did you drink?"

  "There were four bottles of wine in the trash the next day. And I'd already been drinking before I started in on the wine."

  "Well, you don't always drink that way," she says.

  "Yes I do."

  "Really, how often do you drink?" she says.

  "Every day."

  "Lots of people have a drink every evening."

  "That's true," I say, reassured. "So you don't think I have a problem?"

  "I think that's a little melodramatic," she says, raising an eyebrow at me. "Listen, I wouldn't work with you if I thought you had a drinking problem."

  "Well, that's good," I say. "I knew my friends were just overreacting."

  "So what else is going on?" she asks.

  "School is great. Everyone is completely brilliant. The classes are brilliant. The professors are brilliant. I'm sleeping with my professor. He's brilliant."

  "You're sleeping with him?"

  "Jeremy and I broke up. I can sleep with whoever I want."

  "Who else are you sleeping with?"

  "Oh, a few people here and there. No one in particular."

  "These are one-night stands?"

  "No," I huff, "I wouldn't call them that." I am dropping into beds left and right. I'm juggling half a dozen sometime-lovers and it's not enough. Periodically, I dismiss the entire cast of characters and start looking anew.

  "Well, it sounds like things are going really well," she says, looking at her watch.

  "They're not." I suddenly feel very small. I gaze at the expensive cream-colored carpet. "I can't deal with it," I nearly whisper. "It's too much. It's going too fast."

  "What is? What do you mean?" She sighs. She has that here-we-go-again tone.

  "Everything. I don't know what I mean." I stare out the window. The air conditioner hums. She sits with her long legs crossed, not getting it at all. I don't know how to make her get it. I don't know what I want her to get. For all her obliviousness, the fact is that I'm not telling her everything. I allude to the chaos, mention the drinking, say I'm scared, but I still make light of these things.

  "It's just kind of a nightmare," I say. "My life is a nightmare. The affairs are a nightmare. The stress is a nightmare. The book is late. I'm turning into a monster. I don't care about anything. I feel like I'm going to explode. It never lets up. I feel like I'm choking on it." I look helplessly at her. She gazes calmly at me.

  "Are you taking your Depakote?" she asks.

  "Yes," I say. "I'm not sure it's helping too much." A psychiatrist with any wits at all would be alarmed at my own admission that I was drinking too much, and would make the obvious connection between the fact of the drinking and the fact that my meds weren't working. But apparently she doesn't have any wits. Depakote and alcohol are an especially toxic combination—both are processed by the liver, and in high enough doses, both can seriously damage it. Even alone, Depakote's not a med to be played with, and its levels in the bloodstream are supposed to be carefully monitored. This psychiatrist doesn't check my levels once, despite the fact that she's upping my dose almost
every time she sees me.

  "I think the Depakote's working. You'd be in much worse shape if it weren't." She looks at her watch and writes me a prescription. She rips it off the pad and hands it to me. "I'll see you next week."

  They ask me at parties, So, what do you do? I say I'm a writer. Really? Fascinating! Fabulous shoes! I pretend to be one of them, but I'm not and never will be. I begin to have anxiety attacks at the very mention of dinner parties.

  But here I am at yet another one. The woman across from me mentions that her mother is a psychiatrist. Brightly, she turns to me. You're on medication, aren't you?

  My wineglass stops on its way to my mouth. I am mortified. Everyone at the table is mortified. Except the chipper woman who asked. I am a freak show. I am not one of them. I am a failure as a wife, already divorced at twenty-five. I will never get married again. I will never learn to play house. I will never be a success.

  Yes, I say, and my wineglass completes its route to my mouth, and I take a swallow and set it down. I play with the stem of the glass and stare at my place mat. Surely someone will say something soon. Surely we will not sit around here staring at me much longer. Soon someone will say, Anyway—

  Thank God, someone clears his throat. Anyway—

  So what are you taking? the bright woman chimes in.

  I want to die. Depakote, I say.

  I've heard it's a good med, she says. But aren't you on tranquilizers? she asks. Will this never end? I should think you'd need something to calm you down? She smiles at me.

  Klonopin, I say, and stand and push my chair in. Excuse me. I hurry to the bathroom, my face burning, near tears.

  Because I have no other hope of keeping myself from total collapse, I trust my therapist completely. She tells me to take Klonopin, I take Klonopin. She tells me to take massive, toxic doses of Depakote, I take them. She tells me I don't have a drinking problem, so I don't. She's the professional. I swallow my pills each morning and night, with my bedside wine.

  I'm working around the clock on the book and school and teaching two classes, drunk or sober, it doesn't matter, and my stress level is through the roof. I've blown through almost all the money I made on Wasted and the advances for the novel as well, and I'm not quite sure on what. My friends are giving up on me. I'm not sleeping, I'm having compulsive, risky affairs, hardly eating. Why eat? There are plenty of calories in booze.

  Another night, another party, another fabulous red dress: I am in my bathroom putting on red lipstick. I am made up like a little garish doll. I will be the perfect guest.

  But I am not well.

  My hand shakes. I smear the lipstick. I try to clean it up, only smearing it more. I am gripped with terror. I cannot go. I cannot go to this party. They will see and laugh at me. My lipstick is crooked. My dress is not right. I am not well, and they will know it. They will see it. They will say, She is not well. Oh my. She definitely is not well.

  I am sitting in the closet in the laundry basket in my dress and fabulous shoes. There is lipstick all over my face. I am sobbing. I hold my head in my hands and pull my legs into the laundry basket. I pull the laundry over me. I am very small and well dressed and my lipstick is done poorly and I cannot leave or I will die.

  I am not well.

  Losing It

  Winter 1999

  I am suddenly in Oregon, having driven there from California in the middle of the night. I am on a crowded sidewalk in LA. I am in a hotel room in New York. I don't know how I got here. Anywhere.

  I am in Minneapolis, drunk on my mother's couch while the ball drops at midnight in Times Square on New Year's Eve 1999, and it becomes the year 2000, and everyone cheers. I pull an afghan over me and drink white wine from the bottle. Why bother with a glass?

  I am inexplicably standing in front of an undergraduate classroom at my school, teaching Shakespeare. There has been a terrible mistake. I am a failure. I am a fraud.

  I am on my seventh martini at lunch.

  God knows whose bed this is now.

  It seems always to be night. I am always in my car. Things flash past. Lights smear across the sky. The Golden Gate Bridge, always a popular suicide spot, swings its mammoth girth beneath my wheels. I am driving a hundred miles an hour. I dimly remember having dinner with the person in the seat next to me, with whom I may or may not be having an affair. He is screaming and laughing hysterically. I switch lanes with the speed of a racecar driver. I am a racecar driver. I am the Indy 500. I am the car. He screams. I fly.

  I am now teaching my class in a bar. It saves time. No need to move between class and happy hour. Happy hour gets longer and longer. Happy hour is all day. In the morning, I get up, swallow my wine and meds, stagger into the kitchen, and pick up the bottle of vodka to steady my body, which shakes so hard I can barely hold the bottle to my mouth with both hands.

  At night, the bottle is always dropping to the floor. I swing my head toward it and follow it headfirst. Red wine or vodka or scotch spills all around me. I pick myself up and stagger to bed. Clean it up later. Once I've steadied my hands with the bottle. Which I will then drop.

  I am disappearing. Such a hassle; you're sitting there quite peacefully and then all of a sudden you're in Mexico watching a gecko eat the red hibiscus. You're skulking through the Tenderloin, conspiring with the bums. You're lying on the kitchen floor in a cocktail dress; your mother is there; Darling, do get off the floor, it's not polite, it's really not; no, darling, would you please not climb into the cupboard; darling, are you feeling all right?

  I dress myself neatly and head off to school. I actually make it to lunch before I have a drink.

  My chemistry's in chaos. I am sleep deprived, poisoned with meds, pickled with booze. That I have made it all this way without dying or killing myself or someone else is a miracle, or a joke. I am a joke, my life is a joke, I win an award for teaching, I delay the book once again. I hole up in my apartment with my bottles and books. I faithfully take my meds and wonder why on earth they're not working. I know I'm going crazy, and the people left in my life watch me turn yellow from the alcohol, shrivel up like a raisin, clothes hanging on me, hands bony and blue, a chatty head that spins from ecstasy to horror to a mask with empty eyes.

  It is only a matter of time.

  Crazy Sean

  June 2000

  He is mad before me.

  By this I mean he is mad before he meets me, and this summer, he goes mad before I do.

  If only things would stay simple: the sound of the foghorns at night, the wild calla lilies that grow along the fence, the cool sharp fog that wraps around my face and throat. But it isn't that kind of summer. And this time I have a partner in madness.

  Madness will push you anywhere it wants. It never tells you where you're going, or why. It tells you it doesn't matter. It persuades you. It dangles something sparkly before you, shimmering like that water patch on the road up ahead. You will drive until you find it, the treasure, the thing you most desire.

  You will never find it. Madness may mock you so long you will die of the search. Or it will tire of you, turn its back, oblivious as you go flying. The car is beside you, smoking, belly-up, still spinning its wheels.

  But at first, as always, it fools me. At first it is lovely, showy, hallucinatory, neon bright. I am viscerally, violently alive. I don't know when I turn the corner from merely crazy to completely psychotic, but when I do, Sean turns with me. We draw into ourselves, our eyes rolling back in our heads so that soon we can see nothing but the chaos and terror of our own minds.

  We meet when I'm teaching summer school in San Francisco. I pace in front of the class, leaping, punching the air, pouring out everything I know—I am wildly manic and usually drunk by early afternoon, and the board is crowded with my mad scribbles, so tangled up they're indecipherable. Teaching allows my manic stream of thought to focus on the one thing I still care about: words. Sean is one of my students. Our eyes meet and we read each other's lips, knowing each other intimately at once. When
we speak, we hear the weird, warped voice of something insane.

  Sean, a slight man, very pale, his short-shorn dirty blond hair receding already, is an astonishing writer. He gives me his novel. It's very dark and very beautiful. Sean is slipping into a psychotic depression, and I am flying toward a psychotic mania. Quickly, our relationship is tight, intense, obsessive. We pour out pages and pages of letters to each other, spend hours each day e-mailing when we can't be together, the connection between us sudden and essential and profound. If both of us are not already losing our slim grips on reality, we will be soon.

  But we don't know, or care, anything about that. There is nothing strange about us. Medication isn't necessary. We don't talk about mental illness, which has nothing to do with the perfect union of minds that we have found. Our minds have reached a pinnacle of perception, and we see things the way no one else can see them, and the way we see them is the way they really are.

  It is decided that we will leave. We will run away. We will go to the desert, where nothing can touch us, where the lives we hate will be forgotten, escaped. We will find ourselves a map. We will find our way.